This is a really stupid question. From that article, it looks like his release point was a couple inches higher with the curve than with his other pitches. Is that common? Does he risk tipping the pitch to someone with, say, Joey Votto's plate vision?

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neely wrote:but in reality 2006 .3642007 .3512008 his one big year2009 .3472010 90 games played2011 .323 what do you call that?

A full game sample of a guy consistently realeasing the ball from the same spot has to at least be encouraging, no?

I mean, it's neat. It's a fun tweet, which is all that is. My irritation is more with the other one. North is a really smart guy but I think there's still a ton of people trying to latch onto changes in extremely noisy data that make it little more than trivia. More analysis is better than less, but this stuff always seems to be done so breathlessly when it's just not as useful as it's made to believe. I mean, look at the timestamps:

He didn't even have verification about a wild swing he saw in the data before publishing! I don't want to come across as yelling at clouds, I'd rather see this stuff than nothing, and some of my favorite writers(Jeff Sullivan in particular) annoy me with this at times. I just think that because this stuff is so poorly understood relative to actual outcomes, people assume that people finding oddities have stumbled onto a devastating insight when more often than not they haven't.

Transmogrified Tiger wrote:some of my favorite writers(Jeff Sullivan in particular) annoy me with this at times.

i was thinking about sullivan throughout this whole post. he is great in a lot of ways, but he is a major proponent of poking fun of people who read too much into early results but also goes crazy himself with one start of release point, spin, movement, and velocity data.

Last edited by treebird on Fri Apr 06, 2018 10:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Transmogrified Tiger wrote:some of my favorite writers(Jeff Sullivan in particular) annoy me with this at times.

i was thinking about sullivan throughout this whole post. he is great in a lot of ways, but he is a major proponent of poking fun of people who read to much into early results but also goes crazy himself with one start of release point, spin, movement, and velocity data.

And especially in the case of Sullivan(by far my favorite baseball writer), I get it. Coming up with interesting topics every single day, and in the first week of the season no less, is not easy. It's just a pet peeve of mine that we don't seem to learn from our mistakes. Remember when everyone's velocity was terrible last year and then wait no it was actually the radar system? Or all the other times that velocity went way up/down and it was just a measurement issue or the guy was throwing up the night before and a few days later it was back to normal? I'd just love to see more 'here's a month's worth of material change' on this stuff when for pitchers it seems to always be about 1-2 outings.

I agree that it is silly to read too much into changes in release point and movement over small samples, but velocity stabilizes very quickly. I think it is one of the things that can give us useful information early in the season. I think the main problem last year was that MLB changed the process by which they captured velocity. So it made it impossible to measure it against previous years’ data, which is the only way you can even learn anything about velocity.

So any analysis last year was horsefeathers out of the gate. And it led to a lot of guess work and confusion. But even still, looking at the guys who had lost a lot of velocity a couple of starts in... things didn’t work out very well for that group. A lot of guys were either pitching injured or ended up injured. Some others proved completely ineffective and aren’t even in the league anymore.

Even looking at our pitchers: Lackey was horrible and retired. Arrieta, Lester, and Hendricks weren’t quite as effective and all missed some time. Hendricks was the only one that saw his velocity recover.

Most importantly though is that velocity changes have been shown to correlate with success. Obviously a change in velocity won’t affect all guys the same. But velocity matters. With release point, it’s guesswork if it’s just noisy, why it’s changed, what a change will result in, and why it will matter, if at all. A guy could just be pitching differently but with the same results. A guy pitching slower seems a lot different to me, though.

So I agree that release point and movement is too noisy and doesn’t interest me much in small samples. But velocity changes still scare the horsefeathers out of me.

Transmogrified Tiger wrote:some of my favorite writers(Jeff Sullivan in particular) annoy me with this at times.

i was thinking about sullivan throughout this whole post. he is great in a lot of ways, but he is a major proponent of poking fun of people who read to much into early results but also goes crazy himself with one start of release point, spin, movement, and velocity data.

And especially in the case of Sullivan(by far my favorite baseball writer), I get it. Coming up with interesting topics every single day, and in the first week of the season no less, is not easy. It's just a pet peeve of mine that we don't seem to learn from our mistakes. Remember when everyone's velocity was terrible last year and then wait no it was actually the radar system? Or all the other times that velocity went way up/down and it was just a measurement issue or the guy was throwing up the night before and a few days later it was back to normal? I'd just love to see more 'here's a month's worth of material change' on this stuff when for pitchers it seems to always be about 1-2 outings.

i thought it was the rest of the league's velo was up and ours was down or something

whatever it was i'm pretty sure ours was still bad even after they figured it out

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The Cubs’ transaction list under Epstein and Hoyer reads like a work of fiction, a wish-fulfillment list composed in hindsight.

Obviously I wouldn’t care too much about one game’s velocity readings. Anything that happens during one event could just be the happenings of a weird day. But even after only 2-3 consecutive starts with similar velocity numbers, I start worrying. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.

I agree that it is silly to read too much into changes in release point and movement over small samples, but velocity stabilizes very quickly. I think it is one of the things that can give us useful information early in the season. I think the main problem last year was that MLB changed the process by which they captured velocity. So it made it impossible to measure it against previous years’ data, which is the only way you can even learn anything about velocity.

So any analysis last year was horsefeathers out of the gate. And it led to a lot of guess work and confusion. But even still, looking at the guys who had lost a lot of velocity a couple of starts in... things didn’t work out very well for that group. A lot of guys were either pitching injured or ended up injured. Some others proved completely ineffective and aren’t even in the league anymore.

Even looking at our pitchers: Lackey was horrible and retired. Arrieta, Lester, and Hendricks weren’t quite as effective and all missed some time. Hendricks was the only one that saw his velocity recover.

Most importantly though is that velocity changes have been shown to correlate with success. Obviously a change in velocity won’t affect all guys the same. But velocity matters. With release point, it’s guesswork if it’s just noisy, why it’s changed, what a change will result in, and why it will matter, if at all. A guy could just be pitching differently but with the same results. A guy pitching slower seems a lot different to me, though.

So I agree that release point and movement is too noisy and doesn’t interest me much in small samples. But velocity changes still scare the horsefeathers out of me.

I’ve got a whole other rant about stabilization but it’s the weekend and the Cubs play soon so that’ll wait for another day.

One of the Cubs twitter takes I’ve been seeing a lot of over the just okay start is “Joe needs to go because he’s not teaching these guys anything and isn’t coaching these guys because they still strike out too much and can’t hit, etc.” And things along those lines.

Which, isn’t that actually what you want your head coach to not be doing? Like that’s the reason they have specialized coaches and a division of labor for all the tasks needed to be done. It’s his job to oversee that and I’d argue his biggest and most important job is to manage the people in the clubhous (which he’s probably the best in the business at doing, in game and lineup moves (which may or may not all be his call), and also act as a conduit from the FO to the coaches/players. He shouldn’t actually be working on things with the pitchers or hitters, sure if he sees a thing or two make a suggestion or talk to a guy about something but that’s not really his job not something he should be spending his time on.

This isn’t little league or HS where the head coach is doing everything.

And I’m not even backing up or defending Joe 100% here, he has his flaws and blind spots like all coaches do (I don’t think they are “that” bad) but it just seems like such an odd angle to take to criticize the guy and call for his job over.

It’s mind-boggling a team that can rake as much as the Cubs can’t hit a fly ball when needed. According to Statcast research, the Cubs average an exit velocity of 77.9 mph on balls hit with a man on third and fewer than two out, last in baseball. Overall, they rank in the middle velocity-wise, at 88.3 mph. Stick a man on third and Chicago's bats go soft.